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  “That’s easy for you to say,” Tricia responded, though she was smiling. Even starting to relax a little. “You’ve probably been riding horses since you were a baby.”

  He chuckled. Made that hat move again. “Before that,” he said. “According to Davis, Brody’s and my mother was a champion barrel racer. She competed until about a month before we were born, and wouldn’t have quit then if the rodeo people hadn’t banned her from the event.”

  While it wasn’t a particularly intimate thing to talk about, Tricia still felt moved, as though she’d received some kind of rare gift. She didn’t know a lot about Conner Creed, beyond the fact that he was dangerously attractive, but she was aware that he was the quiet type, not exactly an introvert, but not an extrovert, like Brody, either.

  “I don’t think I ever met your mother,” she said, mostly to be saying something. Otherwise, his words might have just hung there, between them, fragile as icicles in a spring thaw.

  Conner wasn’t looking at her now, but straight ahead, at the other riders. “Nobody around here ever did,” he said quietly, and after some time had gone by. “She wasn’t a very big woman, and carrying twins was hard on her. She fell sick right after Brody and I were born, and never got better. After the funeral, our dad brought us home to the ranch, and we were still pretty little when he died, too.”

  Tricia’s heart found its way into her voice. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Conner’s smile came as a surprise, given the psychological weight of what he’d just told her. “We were lucky,” he said. “Davis and Kim raised us like we were their own. Gave us a good life.”

  A rush of emotion, partly admiration for Conner’s uncle and aunt and partly something considerably harder to identify, surged through Tricia like the first hopeful breeze of a hard-won spring. Conner was stubborn, and he could be taciturn, she knew, but he was also rock-solid, to the very core—a grown man, not a boy, like so many other guys his age.

  The realization shook Tricia up, and left her with a lot to think about.

  The ride went on, Buttercup and Lakota moving at a snail’s pace. That didn’t seem to bother Conner, though Tricia could tell that he was keeping a close eye on the goings-on up ahead.

  This was his ranch, and because of that, he probably felt a responsibility for every person and every animal on that trail ride.

  “Your turn,” he said presently, and it took Tricia a moment or two to pick up on his meaning. “I knew your dad—he and Davis were good friends—but nobody ever said much about your mother, Natty included.”

  Tricia was getting used to the slow rhythm of Buttercup’s plodding stride. She was still going to be sore, she knew that for certain, but at least she had some inkling of why people liked to ride horses. There was a sort of freedom in it, a kind of quiet power, and she could see a long way into the distance.

  “Mom’s a trauma nurse,” Tricia said. “She and Dad were divorced when I was seven, which is why I split my time between Seattle and Lonesome Bend while I was growing up. She’s out of the country now, working for one of the emergency relief agencies.”

  “It was like that for Steven,” he said. “The going back and forth between his folks, I mean. His mom and Davis were married for about five minutes before they realized they’d made a terrible mistake—they might as well have come from different universes—and went their separate ways. Davis wanted to be part of his son’s life, though—he insisted Steven had to grow up as a Creed, and spend his summers here in Colorado until he was old enough to decide things for himself, and he paid child support right along, even when Steven’s mother said it wasn’t necessary because she didn’t need his money.”

  There it was, Tricia thought. That quiet integrity, that steadiness she’d recognized in Conner a few minutes before. Maybe he’d inherited the trait, though not from his dad, to hear Natty tell it. Just the night before, she’d described Blue Creed as a “renegade,” said Brody took after him, but not Conner.

  In this case, Tricia figured it was more a case of nurture than nature. Conner was the way he was because, despite losing both parents, he’d been raised in a loving household. It had mattered to Davis and Kim Creed how their infant nephews turned out.

  Brody’s famous wild streak, on the other hand, was harder to figure out. Maybe, in his case, the reverse had been true, and nature had prevailed over nurture. The whole thing was beginning to tangle Tricia’s brain.

  The two of them rode in companionable silence for a while and, eventually, the riders up ahead stopped along a quiet inlet in the river, to dismount and stretch their two legs, and let their four-legged companions drink.

  Even from so far back, Tricia could see that Sasha was having a good time—maybe the best since she’d arrived in Lonesome Bend for a visit that was already halfway over—and that touched her heart.

  Her feelings must have shown in her face, because Conner commented, “That little girl means a lot to you.”

  “Yes,” Tricia agreed, after swallowing. “Sasha’s mother, Diana, and I are close friends.” She sighed, and then added, without meaning to at all, “Seattle won’t be the same without them.” A pause. “They’re moving to France, because of Paul’s job. That’s Sasha’s dad.”

  Conner absorbed that. Nodded. “You’re planning on going back there?” he asked presently. “To Seattle?” His voice was quiet, and if he cared about the answer, one way or the other, there was nothing in his tone to indicate it.

  “If I ever manage to sell the drive-in and River’s Bend,” she said, “I’ll definitely go back. I loved living there.”

  “Why?” Conner asked.

  The simplicity and directness of that question caught Tricia off guard. “I guess I’m a city girl at heart,” she finally replied. “And Seattle is a great town.”

  “I hear it rains a lot.” His tone was noncommittal and a little flat.

  Tricia grinned. “Not as much as the hype would lead a person to believe,” she replied. “When the weather is good, Seattle is unbelievably beautiful. It’s so green, and the Olympic Mountains are white with snow year-round. The seafood is excellent, and you can buy the loveliest fresh flowers at the Pike Place Market—”

  Conner didn’t comment.

  Tricia watched him out of the corner of her eye for a few moments, then went on talking. She wasn’t one of those women who couldn’t stand silence, but today, for some reason, it made her uncomfortable. “I guess it’s all a matter of perspective,” she said tentatively, standing up in the stirrups because her thighs ached.

  After this, she was going to be bow-legged.

  “I guess so,” Conner agreed. “I can’t imagine living anyplace but here.”

  They’d almost reached the river’s edge by then, where the other riders and their horses were taking a break, and she could see the campground on the opposite side of the water, and beyond that, a glimpse of the top of the peeling screen at the Bluebird Drive-in, since the two properties adjoined each other.

  Over the years, Diana had accused Tricia of not knowing when to cut her losses and run—referring to Hunter, in most instances—and this was evidently one of those times. She knew she should shut up, but the words just kept spilling out of her. “You’ve never even thought about living anywhere but Lonesome Bend?” she asked, finding that hard to believe.

  “I went to college in Denver,” Conner said, tugging his hat brim down lower over his eyes and keeping his face in profile. “Couldn’t wait to graduate and get back here.”

  To Joleen, Tricia thought, with a bruising sting in the center of her heart, and then wondered where in the heck that had come from.

  “What about Brody?”

  Conner spared her a sidelong glance, but it didn’t last more than a moment. “What about him?” he asked, and there was a tautness in his voice now. The Conner who’d told her about his mother, the pregnant barrel racer, was gone.

  Tricia closed her eyes for a moment, realized how tightly she was gripping the reins and ea
sed up a little. “I just meant—well—he left Lonesome Bend—”

  “That he did,” Conner bit out.

  Tricia sighed, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Shut up, shut up, said the voice of common sense.

  “And now he’s back,” she went on, against her own advice.

  “Yeah,” Conner said. “Until he starts itching to follow the rodeo again, anyhow.” His tone was entirely civil, but it was also cold. Even dismissive. He was telling her, as surely as if he’d said it in so many words, that he didn’t want to talk anymore.

  Not to her. And not about Brody.

  Before, they’d been enjoying an easy, open exchange, a friendly chat. When, Tricia wondered, saddened, had things taken this unhappy turn? When she’d told him that she planned on leaving Lonesome Bend, once she’d sold her land, she thought. But, no, that couldn’t be it. Why would Conner Creed care whether she stayed or moved away?

  By then, they’d caught up with the others, and Sasha rushed over on foot, bright-eyed from the fresh air and an afternoon spent doing something she clearly loved. She gripped Buttercup’s bridle expertly and smiled up at Tricia.

  “Get down and walk around,” the little girl said. “That way, you won’t be as sore later on.”

  Conner swung down off Lakota’s back and left the horse to graze. He waited, probably intending to help Tricia down from the saddle, but she, smarting at the way he’d suddenly shut down, had something to prove.

  And that something was that she didn’t need Conner Creed’s help to get down off a horse.

  She dismounted, glad her back was turned to him when her feet struck the ground, because pain raced up her legs on impact, so intense that she caught her breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds.

  “You shouldn’t jump down like that,” Sasha counseled solemnly, and very much after the fact. “It usually hurts a lot, landing on the balls of your feet. Has to do with the circulation.”

  Tricia lifted her chin. Then turned, smiling, from Buttercup’s side.

  “No worries,” she said, too quickly to be really credible, even to a child.

  Conner sliced one unreadable look at her and then walked away, engaging Carolyn and some of the other riders in conversation. In its own way, that hurt as much as making contact with the ground had.

  “You’re doing really well,” one of the rancher’s wives told Tricia. Her name, Tricia recalled, was Marissa Rogers. In the old days, she’d been part of Joleen Williams’s crowd, with no time for the likes of Tricia.

  Now, though, the look in Marissa’s clear eyes was kind and friendly.

  “Thanks,” Tricia said, managing a little smile. It wasn’t as though Marissa had shunned her when they were kids, or bullied her in any way. She’d simply ignored her, and it had all happened a long, long time ago.

  “I hear Natty’s back from Denver,” Marissa went on. “I’d love to stop by the house and say hello, but I don’t want to intrude if she’s not feeling well.”

  “Natty’s a little tired,” Tricia replied carefully. Her great-grandmother was a sociable person, and she enjoyed company, but she wasn’t a hundred percent by any means. “I’m sure she’d be glad to see you, though.”

  “I’ll give it a few days,” Marissa said, with a smile. But then she was looking past Tricia, her eyes narrowing a little. “Uh-oh,” she murmured, so quietly that Tricia nearly didn’t hear her. Automatically, Tricia turned to follow Marissa’s gaze.

  Brody and Joleen were riding toward them, at top speed, both of them laughing, though the sound didn’t carry above the sound of their horses’ hooves. They were racing, and it was neck-and-neck, a dead heat.

  Tricia looked around for Conner, and this was an automatic response, too, but her glance snagged on Carolyn first. Her friend’s face was full of pain.

  Tricia started toward her, but before she could make her way to Carolyn’s side, the other woman was back on her horse and riding along the riverbank, her head held high, her spine rigid.

  “Poor Carolyn,” Marissa said, in a tone of genuine sympathy, standing at Tricia’s elbow.

  Tricia didn’t ask what Marissa had meant by that, though she wanted to. To do so would have been a little too much like gossiping behind Carolyn’s back.

  Sasha had Show Pony by the reins again, and she looked as though she might mount up and chase after Carolyn herself.

  “Let her go,” Tricia said, very gently, putting a hand on Sasha’s shoulder.

  After that, though it was a while before everybody headed back, the party was essentially over. If Brody and Joleen cared, they gave no sign of it; they didn’t even slow their horses as they shot past, both of them leaning low over the animals’ necks and shedding happy laughter behind them like a dog shaking off water.

  When the time came to get back in the saddle, Tricia hauled herself up onto Buttercup with a difficulty she hoped no one else noticed. Conner had left Lakota standing nearby, and he mounted up with barely a glance at Tricia.

  He stayed close beside her all the way back to the barn, dutiful but silent, the small muscles along his jawline bunched tight. And for all that Tricia could have reached over and touched him, she knew by the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head that his thoughts were far away.

  ON THE WAY HOME, Conner was careful to hold Lakota in check—the horse wanted with everything in him to bolt for home at a dead run, and it wasn’t going to happen. Buttercup, despite her age, would go from zero-to-sixty in hardly more than a heartbeat, causing Tricia to either fall off or be scared half to death.

  You’re a damn fool, Conner Creed, he told himself grimly. By his reckoning, any half-wit should have known a woman like Tricia wouldn’t be content to spend the rest of her life in a backwater place like Lonesome Bend. Why, she’d fairly shimmered before, telling him about Seattle, with its seafood and its cut flowers and its snow-covered mountains.

  Hell. Colorado had snow-covered mountains aplenty, and fields full of wildflowers three seasons of the year. As for seafood—who needed it, when the river and the creeks and a dozen lakes were all right there, handy and practically brimming with fish?

  Conscious of Tricia beside him, Conner went right on ignoring her. He knew she wasn’t going back to Seattle at the first opportunity because of that city’s many charms. The real draw was the guy he’d glimpsed on her computer monitor that first morning, when he’d dropped by with Natty’s firewood.

  Conner unclamped his back molars, to ease the growing ache in the hinges of his jaws. He supposed the yahoo in that screen-saver picture was good-looking enough to suit most women, but Conner figured him for an idiot, if only because he’d let Tricia McCall out of his sight for what—a year and a half? In the other guy’s place, he would have visited often, at the very least, and probably made sure there was an engagement ring on her finger, too. One with plenty of sparkle, so any man with eyeballs would know she was spoken for.

  He was thinking like a cave dweller, thinking like Brody—Conner knew that. But he couldn’t seem to get a handle on his attitude. Being around Tricia made him feel as though all the known laws of physics had been suspended—up was sideways and down was someplace beyond the clouds.

  Conner swept off his hat with one hand, ran the other through his hair and sighed. And if all that wasn’t enough to chap his hide, there was that little show Brody and Joleen had put on, out there on the range.

  What the hell was that about?

  And why had Brody helped himself to Conner’s clothes and gotten his hair cut shorter? It gave Conner a schizophrenic start just to look at his twin, since he’d gone to the barbershop the other day as Brody and come out as a more-than-reasonable facsimile of Conner.

  Yep, Brody was definitely up to something. But what?

  “Conner?” Tricia said, out of the blue.

  They’d almost reached the far side of the inner pasture by then, moving, as they were, at the breathtaking speed of rocks trying to roll uphill, and the rest of the trail ridin
g party was already at the barn. Folks were unsaddling their horses, leading them into their trailers. Hell, some of them were already on the road home.

  “What?” he asked, sounding more abrupt that he’d intended. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bite her lower lip.

  When she’d formulated her reply, she said, “Thank you.”

  He turned his head to look straight at her then. “For—?”

  She blushed. Her eyes dodged his, widened when she forced herself to face him again. “Inviting Sasha and me on the trail ride,” she told him shyly.

  He felt like a jerk. “You’re welcome,” he bit out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “DON’T ASK ABOUT the trail ride,” Tricia told Natty early the next morning, when she and Valentino got back from their walk. “It was an absolute disaster.”

  Still in her robe and slippers, though she had pinned her silver-white hair up into its customary Gibson-girl style, Natty sat at her kitchen table, Winston perched on the chair next to hers while she fed him little morsels of sardine.

  “Did I ask about the trail ride?” Natty inquired sweetly.

  Sasha was out of bed, Tricia thought, with a glance up at the ceiling. She could hear the shower running upstairs.

  “You were about to ask,” she said, unfastening Valentino’s leash so he could walk over and rub noses with Winston.

  Natty waited a beat. “Why was the trail ride a disaster, dear?”

  Tricia sighed, shoved the leash into the pocket of her jacket, and helped herself to a cup from Natty’s cupboard and coffee from her old-fashioned plug-in percolator. “Let me count the ways,” she said, after a few sips.

  Valentino lost interest in Winston and focused on the little plate of sardines instead. Natty fed him the last smidgen, much to her cat’s consternation, and rose to set the dish in the sink and wash her hands.

  “Sasha had a marvelous time,” Natty observed, drying her fingers on a small embroidered towel with a fussy crocheted edge and returning to her seat at the table.

  Winston, disgruntled, leaped down from his chair and pranced into the hallway. Valentino was right behind him.